First new motorbike from Ariel in over 40 years as the track-car maker that
bought the name unveils a two-wheeler

Next year one of the iconic names of British motorcycling will return when an Ariel goes on sale for the first time in more than 40 years.

The Ace will be produced by the same Ariel company that bought the defunct brand in the late Nineties, but first used the name on the highly acclaimed Atom sports car.

The Ace is instantly connected to that machine by the lattice design of its carefully manufactured aluminium frame, which echoes the open "scaffold" body design of the stripped out Atom.

But while the insanely fast Atom has made its name as one of the finest track-day car you can buy, Ariel boss Simon Saunders says that the Ace is much more a road bike. “Out-and-out sports bikes are waning – race-replica bikes are so far beyond average rider’s capabilities that unless you’re [motorcycle racer] John McGuiness it’s becoming academic,” Saunders told The Telegraph. Instead, the company claims the bike is fast, agile but also easy to ride.

As is clear from the pictures, the looks don’t reference past bikes like Ariel’s long-lived Red Hunter single-cylinder built from 1932 to 1959. “We actively didn’t want to do a retro bike,” Saunders says. Instead he claims the Ariel name is honoured by being as innovative as the original firm was, right back to the original penny farthing bicycle – one of Ariel’s first ever vehicles.

The innovation partly comes from the fact that the Ace uses the 170bhp Honda 1,200cc V4 engine as fitted to the Japanese firm’s big VFR (the Atoms also use Honda engines). That brings the option of a dual-clutch gearbox with manual or automatic settings, for example.

No two Aces will be alike, reckons Saunders. The list of options is staggering. Around the frame and and engine you can choose different forks, seats, seat heights, handlebars, footrests, gear leves – pretty much anything, including the choice of carbon-fibre wheels.

A base bike will cost £20,000, but Saunders estimates the average buyer will take that to £25-30k, putting it close to the start price of a four-wheeled Ariel. “Motorcylists have a deep passion about their bikes, they want them to become individual,” he says. “If in the future if you lined everyone’s Ace and asked them who’s got the best, and everyone will put their hand up,” he said.

Saunders says he started out with cars with an eye on using them to fund the bikes. He estimated production will be between 100-150 a year, so in terms of numbers taking the bikes past the cars, of which Ariel currently makes about 100 a year. He’s looking to hire another five employees at the firm’s base in Crewkerne, Somerset, bringing the workforce to 19.

He believes the cost isn’t prohibitive for what you get. He says: “What do you pay for one of the best cars in the world? £150,000? A million? Here you’ve got one of the best bikes in the world for the price of a family saloon.”